What is Aristotelian Prohairesis?

A few weeks back, I gave my last talk for the semester, presenting a paper at the 7th Felician Ethics conference, asking and answering the question just what does Aristotle mean by that slippery term prohairesis?

Should it be taken to be what many translators -- at least in the Nicomachean Ethics -- have made it out to be, namely "deliberative choice"?  Does that really encompass all of the uses Aristotle makes of this term, not only in the two Ethics, but also in works as diverse as the Politics, Rhetoric, De Anima, or Poetics. I address the question in this video of the talk, and handle some interesting Q & A, eventually capping the discussion by some levity about the rhetorical force of aligning oneself with Jesus and one's opponents with Hitler.



I've been puzzling about this particular issue in Aristotle interpretation for some time, spurred not only by the ambiguities of Aristotle's own text, but also by Epictetus' much more expansive use of the very same term, and by the cognate similarity between Greek pro-hairesis, German Vor-nehmen, and English pre-ference (which of course, is itself of Latin derivation, through French!). 

Some months ago, I submitted my manuscript for a book chapter (in a volume on Virtue Ethics and Phenomenology) grappling with this very issue, but in a more comparative rather than exegetical manner -- making the case for a widened conception of Aristotelian prohairesis mapping onto the conception of Vorhehmen and value-response in the moral theories of Max Scheler and Dietrich Von Hildebrand.  But that, as they say, is another story, for another time. . .  perhaps once I've got the proofs to go over.

Another Anselm Lecture

I'm finally getting around to posting this here in Orexis Dianoētikē -- I can plausibly plead as an excuse  the pressures imposed by (attempting) solid work in my ongoing classes -- a recent lecture I've given on Saint Anselm of Canterbury. 

This particular talk, with some very lively Q & A at the end, comes from the recent conference focused on the question "Must Morality Be Grounded Upon God," hosted by the Franciscan University of Steubenville (incidentally -- and this is entirely off topic -- incorporating the name of one of my long-time heroes, the Baron Von Steuben, drillmaster to the budding Continental Army during our American Revolution).



In this talk, I answer the question structuring the conference with some typically Anselmian, "let's make some distinctions. . .  and then Yes. . .  and No" -- but more Yes than No in Anselm's case.

I'm not entirely happy with the shape of the paper, some I'm loath to upload it into my usual channels like Academia.edu or GoogleDrive -- once I've reworked it, added all the references it need, and I'm satisfied with it, I'll definitely post a copy for public viewing.

There's a reason I rather tongue-in-cheek call this post "another Anselm lecture" -- I've given quite a few of them over the last five years.  Here's a representative sampling:

• A Personalist Aspect of Saint Anselm's Metaphysics
• Non Modo Verbis Sed Et Verberibus: Saint Anselm on Punishment, Violence and Coercion
• What Kind of Moral Theory Does St. Anselm Hold? 
• Freedom, Inclinations of the Will, and Virtue in Anselm’s Moral Theory 
• A Perfectly Simple God and Our Complicated Lives: The 2008 Saint Anselm Lecture 
• Justice as a Degree of Ontological Dignity: An Anselmian Problematic and Solution

All of these are supposed in one way or another to feed into the book project I started years back, specifically devoted to systematically reconstructing and setting out Anselm's moral theory.  Although I've written several chapters, work on that particular project moves slower than I'd like.  But, that -- as well as additional work on translating the De Similitudinibus and the Dicta Anselmi -- are matters to which I plan to give much attention this coming summer and fall.